(Re)Thinking Gentrification Processes. The Place of Religion

Abstract

Gentrification has been defined by urban sociologists and geographers as a process of appropriation of neighborhoods by middle and upper classes, provoking the displacement of poorer inhabitants. This sociodemographic change also implies a reconfiguration of urban landscapes due to the opening of new shops, services, and activities according to the tastes of the new neighborhood inhabitants. Gentrification, therefore, can be understood as a dispute on the access to housing and the uses of public places, producing a new spatial regime that determines what and who is acceptable in urban space. However, the role of religion in this process of disputing the public space remains almost untouched. Based on the spatial turn in the study of religion in social sciences, I examine the construction of these ambivalent discourses by different local actors (public authorities, local associations, religious actors…) and their implications for expressions of religious minorities in conflictual urban spaces. On the one hand, I show that the public presence of some religious minorities is rejected by dominant social groups who consider it as a source of urban degradation and as an incompatible element with the supposed secular uses of public space. This often implies new spatial regulations which redefine the place and form of religious manifestations. On the other hand, I illustrate how religious pluralism is strategically used by these same actors labeling the neighborhood as a “multicultural” and “cosmopolitan” site.